User Experience, Mittens, and the Spotlight
May 24, 2010
The short article “Five User Experience Trends” identifies the likely rallying points for the UX crowd. I don’t know much about user experience beyond my own limited experience. The post caused me to think about the notion of UX in the context of search and content processing.
The point in the write up that caused some consternation was:
Are people moving away from a world of things to one that values experience more?
I have to admit that this sentence dredged up memories of a sociology class taught by one very unusual fellow. He was talking about the emergence of mittens versus gloves. The idea was that certain environments and their exigencies push hand covering innovation in certain ways. The mitten is ideal for cold climates and those who choose or find themselves living in a land of snow and ice. The five-fingered type of hand covering is a response to other cultural needs.
Now when I think about locating a precise item of information, what is the meaning of “user experience”? For me the statement quoted above applies to a video game type of presentation. I think about interface as a movie marquee, complete with flashing lights, words like “blockbuster” and the name of stars. I can envision spotlights illuminating clouds and lines of limousines disgorging glamorous movie goers.
The reality is that the UX may not have much substance. The razzle dazzle does not have a much, if anything, to do with the film.
The same applies to UX in search. Finding information within applications, applications, and / or repositories is a tricky business. Slapping up a single hit because a numerical recipe “calculates” is the “right one” does not appeal to me. Cluttered interfaces with hidden hot links that pop up with a click or when I hover like those annoying Radiant ads get in the way of my finding what I need.
My hunch is that the “world of things” is going to be around for a long time. The notion of valuing experience is an out growth of some cultural forces. Pictures instead of substance are appropriate for some information climates and not others. When I need data mittens, I want data mittens. When I want, data neoprene surgical gloves, that’s what I want. UX strikes me as a c oat of digital polyurethane over a fragile surface. Perhaps a search system needs more than gloss? When I hear “UX”, I think of a barrier that prevents me from getting to the substance. Do I need images in search results when I am looking for information about online translation of a source in Japanese to an output in English? Do I need pictures of an airport when I am looking for information about a medical condition? Do I need hot links to felines for books about Einstein when I am looking for an example of a quantum cat?
UX is for me one more aspect of information retrieval that has been pushed to center stage. Keep UX on stage but stage left rear, please.
Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2010
Freebie
DataparkSearch, Free Full-Featured Web Search Engine
May 24, 2010
Newslookup.com is a quite the feat of news-search engineering. It is the first search engine to arrange search results by media type (television, radio, Internet, etc.) and category, display separate document parts, and effectively use meta data to crawl the internet to provide a “snapshot look of news websites throughout the world.” This is powered by a free, open-source search system called DataparkSearch, its origins going all the way back to 1998 via Russian programmer Maxim Zakharov.
Now in version 4, DataparkSearch boasts an impressive set of features, including indexing of all (x)html file types as well as MP3 and GIF files; support for http(s) and ftp URL schemes; vast language support; authentication and cookie support with session IDs in URLs; and a wide array of sorting, categorizing, and relevancy models to return specific results quickly. All of this is run through various database systems, notably SQL and ODBC.
Sochi’s Internet, a portal and search engine for the Russian city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, uses the DataparkSearch engine to deliver hotel, job, and real estate data for the city and surrounding area. The CGI front-end seen on the site provides the data collected by the “indexer,” described as a mechanism that “walks over hypertext references and stores found words and new references into the database.” The same mechanism allows for “fuzzy search,” correcting for spelling corrections and different word forms.
DataparkSearch is available through its own Web site or via Google Code where it has a quite busy activity log. Coded in C, the software is supported on a plethora of UNIX operating systems including FreeBSD and RedHat. Frequency dictionaries, synonym lists, and other helpful files can be found in multiple languages on the website, as well. Support for the search engine can be found through their Wiki, forum, and Google Group.
Samuel Hartman, May 20, 2010
Freebie.
Exalead and Dassault Tie Up, Users Benefit
May 24, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who alerted us to another win by Exalead.
Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), one of the world leaders in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, announced an OEM agreement with Exalead, a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search market. As a result of this partnership, Dassault will deliver discovery and advanced PLM enterprise search capabilities within the Dassault ENOVIA V6 solutions.
The Exalead CloudView OEM edition is dedicated to ISVs and integrators who want to differentiate their solutions with high-performing and highly scalable embedded search capabilities. Built on an open, modular architecture, Exalead CloudView uses minimal hardware but provides high scalability, which helps reduce overall costs. Additionally, Exalead’s CloudView uses advanced semantic technologies to analyze, categorize, enhance and align data automatically. Users benefit from more accurate, precise and relevant search results.
This partnership with Exalead demonstrates the unique capabilities of ENOVIA’s V6 PLM solutions to serve as an open federation, indexing and data warehouse platform for process and user data, for customers across multiple industries. Dassault Systèmes PLM users will benefit from its Exalead-empowered ENOVIA V6 solutions to handle large data volumes thus enabling PLM enterprise data to be easily discovered, indexed and instantaneously available for real-time search and intelligent navigation. Non-experts will have the opportunity to access PLM know-how and knowledge with the simplicity and the performance of the Web in scalable online collaborative environments. Moreover, PLM creators and collaborators will be able to instantly find IP from any generic, business, product and social content and turn it into actionable intelligence.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2010
Freebie.
SurfRay Surges
May 24, 2010
SurfRay pinged us on May 21, 2010. We took the opportunity to gather some information about this search and content processing company. We want to break our coverage of SurfRay into two parts. In this first part, we bring you up to date on the company’s product. In the second part, which will run in Beyond Search on May 31, 2010, we take a look at some of the details of the SurfRay products. Here’s the update, which as far as we know is an exclusive look at this company.
SurfRay (www.surfray.com) has released feature-packed Ontolica 2010 containing the new Ontolica Search Intelligence module, and with support for Ontolica Preview. This recent release provides extensive reporting and analytics on search performance and SharePoint content processing. You can get more information about Ontolica here. A free trial is available from this link.
The 2010 release of Ontolica Preview, which provides native support for about 500 document formats, ranging from Office formats to vector image formats and high-fidelity HTML preview, the product also supports in-document highlighting, allows users to browse to best-bet pages inside documents, and is optimized for performance over the internet, with no client installs needed.
Having completed development on Ontolica Express, a search extension to Microsoft Search Server and Search Server Express, they have transformed Microsoft’s free search engine into a much more rich and robust solution. With important features such as wildcard and Boolean search as well as drill down and faceted search, they can provide effective solutions to the customer.
The feature matrix shows how Ontolica adds important functionality to the SharePoint 2010 environment. Notice that the Fast Search solution lacks important out-of-the-box features such as portal usage reports and hot linked thumbnail previews.
Packaged enterprise search solutions most often equate to long and expensive customization and implementation projects for customers. SurfRay is out to change that. With a new managing director and several new releases of the company’s Ontolica and MondoSearch products they have positioned themselves for the impending release of SharePoint 2010. Soren Pallesen, the new CEO, believes SurfRay has a significant opportunity for the firm to grow.
Other search vendors add features that are hard to understand and don’t offer real value for customers. SurfRay is committed to delivering value to customers with easy to use, out of the box, and based on industry-standard technologies.
SurfRay, a Microsoft Certified Partner, can deliver tightly packaged enterprise search solutions that are rich in functionality but easy to test and install – Ontolica installs literally in 5 minutes. And in so doing, SurfRay is responding to customers move toward more packaged search products and away from expensive consulting projects.
Founded in 2000, SurfRay is a global leader in search infrastructure software for enterprises that delivers highly packaged enterprise search solutions that are easy to try, buy and install. SurfRay has more than a 1000 customers in over 30 countries and is dual headquartered in Santa Clara, USA and Copenhagen, Denmark. Their customer base includes some of the most known brands and largest companies in the world, including AT&T Wireless, Bank of Thailand, Best Buy, BMW, Ernst & Young, Ferrari, H & R Block, Intel Solution Services, John Deere, Nintendo, and the list goes on.
SurfRay is a trendsetter in packaged enterprise search solutions that takes the complexity out of deploying business search solutions. They achieve this by releasing new products and versions continuously and by focusing on geographic expansion. They have established dedicated physical presence in local markets to further build their local customer support and international reseller network, such as SurfRay UK and Ireland, SurfRay Benelux and Nordic. All this seems to be working as SurfRay recently announced over 20 percent quarter-to-quarter revenue growth.
Pallesen believes, “Today most customers are very well educated on search technology and they don’t want to be convinced that they need some fancy new techno-feature. The next new thing that truly will transform the search market and deliver substantial value to customers will be enterprise class search solutions that install and are configured as easily as Microsoft Office.”
SurfRay has a deep heritage in innovation and advanced search technology. They continue to leverage this and put valuable enhancement into packaged search solutions that makes search functional as well as easy to install and use.
Stephen E Arnold and Melody Smith, May 24, 2010
Sponsored
KB Crawl to Release New Version of KB Crawl
May 23, 2010
The 2010 I-Expo in Paris come June 9-10 will be the forum for the release of the new KB BI Platform. UK Web site here. French Web site here. In an effort to improve the management of strategic information from the Web, the KB Crawl additional modules will allow users to optimize and personalize their Web monitoring system. Technologically, the new release provides an architecture entirely SaaS (Software as a Service), which means the technology does not need to use its IT department to set up a project monitoring. KB Crawl SAS provides all accommodation on a “Cloud” and guarantees the confidentiality of data. With the KB Crawl Suite’s integrated software, continuous monitoring of the Web to disseminate information and intelligence reports is at the tip of your fingers. The Platform BI enables you to collect, manage and disseminate strategic information collaboratively. KB Crawl has become one of the leading French players for market intelligence and Internet monitoring and this new release is in line with that pattern. For more information navigate to the KB Crawl Web site and download the white paper “KB Crawl 4 and Specialist Modules”.
Melody K. Smith, May 23, 2010
Note: Post was not sponsored.
Google Viacom Discourse
May 23, 2010
I did not know that MBAs and Math Club members allowed their softer natures to surface. Sure, when an MBA stubs a toe at the country club’s swimming pool, a snippet of Ovid might be uttered softly. And when a Math Club member inadvertently smudges a proof with Dorito dust, one might hear, “Gosh darn, Bernoulli.” Imagine my shock when I read “’F— Those Motherf—ers’ YouTube/Viacom Suit Gets Nasty”. I don’t know if the write up is a parody, StreetView-like snippets, or misattributions.” You will need to read the original and make your own decision. I found this comment one of the few I was comfortable quoting in front of the goslings in the Harrod’s Creek goose pond, where exhortations from Homer are as frequent as references to Euripides’ writings. The quote:
“I WANT TO OWN YOUTUBE. I think it’s critical, and if it goes to a competitor…..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I presume that this statement and its rhetorical flourishes was made between Viacom’s pow wow with Google’s founders and the Google acquisition of YouTube.com in the fateful year 2006. Once direct and vibrant interaction dwindled between the keyboard clicks on one Google founder’s laptop and the squeak of another Google founder’s inline skate wheels, the rhetoricians let their creative energies flow.
And what of the attorneys, the wise counselors in this debate? Perhaps these learned professionals are involved in the timely release of the documents containing the golden prose, the heartfelt statements, the periodic sentences? Perhaps the openness of the legal process itself has delivered these sparkling jewels of eloquence to us?
Caesar, that master politician, would have revised his final utterance “Et tu, Brute?” had he studied with the masters of prose at Google and Viacom. How lackluster his alleged last words. Disappointing indeed.
I am—no, we are all—richer for the poetic languages and powerful writing that the alleged quotations summarized in the Ars Technica write up. Thank goodness no union of two brilliant, incisive management teams took place. The world will be enriched when more alleged writings of Googlers and Viacomers become available. I cannot wait.
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2010
An unsponsored post.
The New IBM and Security Know How
May 23, 2010
Maybe this is a public relations stunt. I remember hearing tales of antivirus companies creating malware to force those infected to purchase special purpose removers. Navigate to “IBM Unleashes Virus on AusCERT Delegates.” The key passage in my opinion was:
“At the AusCERT conference this week, you may have collected a complimentary USB key from the IBM booth,” IBM Australia chief technologist Glenn Wightwick wrote in an email to delegates this afternoon. “Unfortunately we have discovered that some of these USB keys contained malware and we suspect that all USB keys may be affected.”
I know the how. Carelessness. I want to think about the why? With IBM pushing code that is a mix of open source and home grown, what other issues may lurk within the firm’s search, data mining, text processing, and system services software?
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2010
Freebie
HTML Speech Input Element
May 22, 2010
Short honk: The idea of talking to a computer and having it answer was a finding in a 1980 Booz, Allen & Hamilton research project I worked on. Over the years, the idea of talking to a computer or other device grabbed the public’s imagination. If you are working on this problem, you will want to take a look at Googler’s “HTML Speech Input Element” by Bjorn Bringert. More I/O excitement?
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2010
Freebie.
Wowd Gets Two Patents – Sign of Future Success?
May 22, 2010
New kid on the block gets two patents on its method for ranking search results based on usage data and its variation on peer-to-peer networking. Wowd is a search system that makes it easier to discover what’s popular on the Web. the company says, “A new way to search… when what’s happening now matters.”
Though Wowd is not yet at the scale that necessitates this patented technology, they are hedging their bets and being prepared for when that day comes. Gigaom.com reported in their article, ‘Wowd Doubles Down With Social Search and P2P Patents” that Wowd doesn’t plan to do much with the patents at the moment but it will demonstrate to investors that they are serious.
The first patent is for a method of ranking web pages based on the way people use them. In other words, it gives a search engine the ability to weigh anonymized information about where users click to go next from a web page. The technology was developed for real-time use and especially social search. The second patient is for their variation on peer-to-peer networking and is not search specific. The real time search sector has a number of vendors fighting for traffic. Wowd is a useful service.
Melody K. Smith, May 22, 2010
Note: Post was not sponsored.
Google, Germany, and Glibness
May 22, 2010
I read in “Google CEO On Privacy Breach: ‘No Harm, No Foul’,” that Eric Schmidt allegedly said, “No harm, no foul” with regard to the current StreetView privacy dust up. I then noted this article: “Google Faces European Investigations In Data Collection Gaff”. The write up said:
A story in the New York Times Thursday said data protection officials in Spain, the Czech republic, France and Germany have started administrative inquiries into Google’s data collection practices, alleging the company had violated local privacy laws. The story said Investigators at France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberties inspected Google’s Paris office Wednesday to gather evidence. And in Germany prosecutors opened an investigation in Hamburg after a law student there filed a formal complaint.
POV (point of view) is important. Glibness can be endearing. Consider Adam Corolla, the popular entertainer. Does glibness in light of investigations in countries travel well?
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2010
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